Valentine's Day readings

On the Op-Ed page of today's NYT, some interesting articles on SVD...

First one on the origins of the day. Choice snippet:

In the Christian hierarchy of respectable womanhood, the virgin ranked highest, the widow next and the wife last. The church upheld the authority of men over their wives, but husbands took their lumps too. One medieval church pamphlet tried to encourage young women to take vows of celibacy by warning them that marriage would drag them down "into the thralldom of a man, and into the sorrows of the world," locking them to a husband who "chideth and jaweth thee and mauleth thee as his bought thrall and patrimonial slave."

Then a very depressing one about how kids kill married romance dead.

In many marriages, erotic love has been supplanted by what The New Yorker once called "the eros of parenthood." Up to 20 percent of couples now report having sex no more than 10 times a year, qualifying them for what the experts call "sexless marriages." Many mothers freely admit to preferring their children's touch to their husband's, without regret or shame.

Where did our love go? Look no further than the adorable little girl on the cover of this month's Parents, clutching a huge, red-sequined heart in her chubby little hands. According to a recent report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, children are a "growing impediment" to a happy marriage.

Eeeek. Go read, they're interesting.